In the Music Business, Steve Horowitz Has Definitely Got Game!

Today's video games are interactive movies, with many based on hit movies. Steve Horowitz's latest gig was as lead composer and audio director for The Princess Bride Game. The Princess Bride Game went on sale June 11 as a download purchase. The composer and band leader has also spent many years writing music for film, dance, TV shows, cartoons and video games.

Most have heard of composers John Williams, Bill Conti and one of my faves, Danny Elfman. But you probably haven't heard of Steve Horowitz. That's likely to change in the future. If you saw the movie "Super Size Me," then you did hear the music he wrote for it.

Horowitz is no stranger to the game medium. He jumped into the field in the '90s, working for Sega, Sony and other video game companies. He's also worked on a huge number of TV projects at Nickelodeon Digital. Those include characters SpongeBob SquarePants, Jimmy Neutron, Dora the Explorer and The Wonder Pets. Horowitz is a member of the Manhattan Producer's Alliance, a coop of high-end film and TV composers. He also records with his 14-piece electro-acoustic chamber group, The Code Ensemble, which fuses pop with tradition.

Horowitz won a Grammy award for engineering the multi-artist "True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe" (best Bluegrass album 1996). He's also been featured in Bass Player magazine (May 2007) and in the books "The Art of Digital Music" and "The Guerilla Guide to the Music Business." Horowitz is a diverse creator of unusual but agreeable sounds, and a prolific musical artist.

We asked this artist to tell us a little about what he does, how he does it, and what are his favorite tools of the trade.

Q: Technology has taken the proverbial quantum leap since you were studying at California Institute of the Arts. Did you play an early Kurzweil or ARP synthesizer? What's the best thing about the digital "music boxes" we have today?